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He’d known what was coming since before the summer break.
It’d been simmering under his skin after P7 at Monaco, P9 at Spa. A low-grade undercurrent of hysteria that had his performance coach nervous about his resting heart rate, had him blinking less in team debriefings, eyes unfocused, smile vacant and pleasing, uncharacteristically pliant with his engineer’s criticisms in front of an audience. Not difficult, not whiney, not bitchy, as if a sudden switch up in demeanour would have Toto forgetting all about that pesky performance clause in his contract extension and the paddock rumours of juvenile drywall-punching in the Red Bull garage. Forget about Kimi’s P2 at Monaco, P1 at Spa.
Max Verstappen drags his tractor to P12 and gets photographed at a Monaco steakhouse with Toto and Susie the next week. George doesn’t get the steakhouse. George gets his office, two days later.
You know how this game is played better than anyone, Toto assures him, a handsome, cloyingly sympathetic line creasing his brow. You understand. You’ll keep playing it. I know you will.
George almost hears it through the tinnitus in his eardrums, even. Smiles, vacant and pleasing, uncharacteristically pliant.
--
Mercedes goes public with the news the Monday after Baku, and George spends the week before Singapore on the pristine marble floor of his apartment bathroom, mouth fuzzy and foul, stomach empty, shoulders propped at a punishing angle against the edge of the tub. He watches, passively, the screen of his cell phone light up with incoming calls from Alex, his manager, his ex-girlfriend. Watches them turn into a steadily increasing number beside missed calls.
Can’t open his phone without seeing his email inbox fill with re-negotiations from concerned sponsors, or the lone text from an unsaved number that just says hey, so he resolutely doesn’t open his phone.
That lasts all of two days before he’s firing off a litany of will loop management in and keep you updated on the developing situation for next season, which is looking quite exciting! : ) to luxury watch and organic wool sweater companies, compulsively deferential to his father’s hard voice in his head, no sponsors, no racing. Sends a thanks for checking in, all good! to Alex, and a swift deletion of the unopened hey. He’s just finished swiping it into non-existence when a new text comes in from his manager.
Check your voicemails and call me, it reads. It’s this or Alpine.
--
“Are you two going to swap racing suits after Abu Dhabi?”
“Don’t give him ideas,” Max smirks into the microphone, the press room missing the first two words of his sentence as he starts talking before he’s lifted it to his mouth, as always. “Any excuse to take his shirt off, right?”
George sinks into the back cushion of the couch, grin stretching painfully, a throaty chuckle, vacant and pleasing.
--
He doesn’t get very far blaming the car. They’d nailed the new regs, as predicted. The rocketship was back, alternating pole with a McLaren every race. It’s just that it hadn’t been him at the front.
It’s almost an advantage, Alex had commiserated with him once George had finished his performatively cheerful hand clasp and hug with Kimi, after the first time. Kimi had nearly shrunk from it, eyeing George’s PR smile with the distaste afforded him by his prodigy status. They never got used to anything. They’re more adaptable than us old farts.
He’s doing a great job, George had replied, all autopilot, as if the deluge of rookie praise hadn’t been sitting like bile in his throat all season, hadn’t had him looking up online the percentage of drivers who retire without ever claiming the champion title, and then the average age of retirement.
Right, Alex had drawled back, in that tone he used when he knew he wasn’t getting below the surface, that day.
He had tried blaming the car, of course. There are countless Reddit threads highlighting his suspiciously timed complaints over the radio – Kimi notches P1 in Q2 and suddenly George is harping on the breaks, the tires, the set up. There are enough threads that the moderators start removing new ones for redundancy.
Enough beating the dead horse, they rule.
Yeah, we should just have a pinned megathread, another commenter suggests, helpfully.
Bro wanted to be a farmer so bad he signed a contract to drive the RB tractor gets the most upvotes, anyway.
--
It’s a clever little joke that sticks in George’s frontal lobe, but he proves it wrong, anyway.
The new Ford engine had been a letdown last season, and it’s not any better in testing for 2027. George is already feeling ungainly in dark navy, as if the colour of his Nomex is sticking to him like sludge, creating extra drag on the car and losing him tenths. He’s slow, he’s almost thirty, he’s on a one-year contract, he’s going to end up on one of the sad Wikipedia lists, the ones like biggest points gap between teammates or drivers with the most podiums but no fucking shot at the championship title in the end.
“It’s shit,” Isack says, blunt and monotone, at the debrief. George tenses at the honesty of it, the practised, empty optimism of his wan smile flickering. “The car is broken.”
“There’s a lot to get out of it yet,” Laurent insists, but he shrugs a shoulder to acknowledge the validity of the condemnation. Then, a tossed wink at George. “That’s where our new feedback machine comes in.”
“I give you feedback,” Isack objects, but he’s relaxed back in his chair, spread out, an easy camaraderie already between them that George feels like he’s interloping on.
“You keep us humble,” Laurent teases back, a light smack on the shoulder with a rolled-up notebook as he passes them by, the rest of the garage shoving their folding chairs back as they launch into activity.
Isack stays behind, turns that lazy attention onto George. “It is shit, yeah?”
George fidgets, flickers through expressions. “Ah, the team has been putting in the work. Still a few weeks out to Australia. We’ll get it there.”
“Mate,” Isack insists, deadpan. He reaches an arm across the gap between their chairs, palm landing heavy on his shoulder. “We can swear here. Say it with me: the car is shit.”
“It’s a bit shit,” George acquiesces, good-humoured, faint. Isack squeezes his shoulder, once, then gives it a friendly smack before pushing to his feet, shimmying the top half of his racing suit back on as he heads for his shit car. George lingers, destabilized by the casualness of it all. It suits him about as well as the navy blue.
--
“It must be weird,” a racing game podcaster is asking Max, who sits adorned in the sleek new Adidas Mercedes v-neck in the video version posted to accompany the episode. “Seeing the new photos of George in Red Bull kit. Like when an annoying guy at school goes out and buys the same pair of Jordans as you.”
Max does that thing he does when he smiles and laughs at the same time, where he tilts his head upward. He looks like a fish, George thinks, sourly.
“It must be nice for the photographers,” Max replies, benevolently. “Finally, someone very pretty is wearing it.”
“Pretty!” the host exclaims, disbelieving laughter at Max’s choice of words, trying to be in on whatever joke he’s not getting. Max raises his palms, still smiling like he’s been clever, like what did I say wrong.
“Come on,” he’s insisting, “he’s like a model, right? He’s good at the model thing.”
George slams his laptop shut, chest burning. The unspoken instead of the driving thing follows him around until race week.
--
It’s a big endearing joke, online. The way Max is always talking about his looks. He gets away with it, like that, as usual.
He said your Instagram was faggy, Alex had confided in him, ages ago, back when he’d been the one in the second seat.
George’s heart had stopped in his chest, ears ringing. Alex had rushed to assure him: it didn’t seem like he was even saying it in a mean way. More like it was just, you know. The thing to say. It’s just how he was brought up, I think. God, George, when his dad is in the garage, it’s like - radioactive.
The posts make their way onto his algorithm: Max go one day without mentioning how pretty you think George is challenge failed again, or this man wanted to get into George’s racing suit so bad he made it legally binding.
He’s not as rose-coloured as the users with his face as their profile picture, despite the flush that creeps up his neck at their insinuations. He knows what Max is really telling the world when he tells the world George is so pretty.
--
“How’s the car?” Max asks, standing tall and proud in a special throwback white suit beside George for the anthem. His hair looks blonder, in it. “It oversteers like crazy, yeah? It helped to - ”
“I don’t need your advice,” George snaps, quietly, lips moving tightly like he’s puppeteering to avoid bad optics as the cameras pan over to them, zoom in.
Max shrugs, stares straight ahead at the children’s marching band giving their all to Advance Australia Fair.
--
One-two Mercedes, Max on the top step. He picks Kimi up in parc fermé when they pull up to their markers, swings him around, helmets knocking. It’s a far cry from the awkward one-armed hugs George had given him for the cameras. The cameras that soak it up, now; the team blubbering and hooting behind the barrier at the dawn of a partnership they can actually muster emotional involvement in. It’s effortless, already.
George parks his car behind Lindblad’s, nursing his own P14. Stands patiently behind Stroll at the weigh in, who, once he takes his ticket, removes his helmet to offer George a sympathetic smile from the safety of his Newey-bought P4, damn him. George offers a limp, flat twist of the mouth in response.
He links up with Oscar on the walk past the podium-finishing interview, Oscar’s own expression it’s usual level of unreadable as they pick up a passing the car feels great as usual from Lando into Button’s mic.
“Nice to be home, at least?” George asks, conciliatory, companionable. A flash of annoyance in Oscar’s impassive eyes. George has never been good at making friends. It hadn’t mattered, for awhile, at the top.
--
GP doesn’t know what to do with him, either.
“What do you want me to do about the tires?” George snaps during Q1 in Suzuka after a disappointing push lap, when GP had informed him which slow turns had kept them from advancing.
“Nothing, preferably, unless you’re starting an internship at Bridgestone.”
The broadcast predictably highlights it, throws it up on screen in writing. It goes viral, even more predictably. GP about to stand outside Max’s window with a boom box.
They operate in tense silence when George stands beside him at the pit wall in between practice sessions, reading off data. He does seem dejected at Max’s absence. Where Max’s complaining was banter, George can never seem to throw off whatever imaginary balance classifies his as simple whining.
“Tell me what I can give you,” George offers up during the race, when it becomes clear that their best result will be data-gathering. An extended silence, before GP’s tinny copy comes over the radio. He doesn’t ask much of him, after, though.
--
“I did text you,” Max says, apropos of nothing, during the driver’s dinner. Liam had pulled the same shtick as years back, making sure they were seated together.
George thinks it might be spite, at this point. The same spite that everyone aside from Alex, and now maybe Isack, punish him with, for not acing the I Am Not A Robot test they all seem to have understood the rules of sometime in the past couple of years, when being real became the most important thing in the world. Waspy politeness no longer makes the grade, apparently. Not since he started being graded on a curve against Max Verstappen.
They’ve all gravitated to their own bubbles of conversation by the after-dinner drinks portion of the evening, with George’s own becoming protective and solitary, nursing some sponsor’s whiskey in a surly silence that Max had seemingly been grateful for, up until now.
“I’m sorry?”
“I texted you,” Max elaborates, arms crossed but eyes soft at the corners. “After.”
Oh. “Oh.”
“You didn’t reply.”
“What would you have liked me to say?” George volleys back, but his hearts not in it, not really, not like it would have been last year. He wants to knock back this artificially sweet whisky and its embarrassing pretensions at a luxury palate and crawl back to his hotel room, get all the rest in the world to prepare himself for another result out of the points in the shitty, broken-down car that Max abandoned. “All good, no worries? No hard feelings about pushing me out of my seat the way you push me off the track? Isn’t it enough that the world gives you no consequences for either?”
“My god, this again,” Max groans, eyes rolling up to the ceiling. George bristles, shoulders tightening.
“Put yourself in my shoes,” he insists.
“I would never be in your shoes,” he replies with an infuriating lack of malice, just matter-of-fact, like the scenario is non-starter, which it is. If my mom had balls, or whatever. George feels a sting behind his eyes anyway, nose reddening humiliatingly.
He stands abruptly, chair legs scraping against restro-bar laminate, ugly and loud. He registers faintly that the room has gone quiet, that Isack is eyeing him warily, that Ollie’s forehead is creased with concern from across the table. George should toss them a bashful grin, a self-effacing chuckle accompanied by a flimsy but accepted excuse about the food not agreeing with him. When did he lose his Mercedes face? His counterfeit cool borrowed from Toto and applied generously to photoshoots for boat shoes?
“George,” Max drawls, vaguely disinterested, the scene an obvious annoyance, like George is a fruit fly that won’t stop gravitating to the lip of his wine glass. Mercedes-cool, now, arm draped casually down the back of his chair.
We can swear here, Isack echoes in the back of his skull. George feels all at once like his car – clunky and fumbling, a desperate assemblage of raw, uncooperative parts.
“Fuck off, thanks,” he replies, cool and polite, real, check the boxes with social faux pas to prove I Am Not A Robot. Reaches for his tumbler and tosses back what’s left of his drink, burning with a hint of cinnamon. Then he leaves, the room silent and pitying in his wake.
I mean, are you really surprised? he imagines Max saying, in his absence.
--
“That’s P8, George!” GP is telling him over the radio, ebullience coming through the warping static.
He feels flush all over, embarrassingly giddy for a position that would have had him storming sulkily through the Mercedes garage a year ago, mechanics giving each other raised eyebrows behind his back as he passes.
“Thanks, yeah,” he rasps out, trying for measured. He bangs a hand against the steering wheel anyway, grinning into the damp fabric of the balaclava. “Great work from the team. Getting better every week.”
“Back at ya from us,” GP replies.
George’s throat tightens. When he pulls into parc fermé, a Red Bull mechanic whose name he’s already forgotten pulls him into a tight hug and slaps him on the back, huffing laughter against his helmet. George feels weightless when he lets go, like a helium balloon cut loose at a birthday party.
He catches Max’s eye from where he’s waiting impatiently for Coulthard to finish asking Kimi some asinine question about his P2-claiming dive at the safety car restart, and Max startles, then grins, eyes crinkling near-shut.
Fucking – rubbing it in. George feels the acute humiliation of his pride at making it into the points, from where Max is standing. From where he’s always standing. He ducks into the garage, hardly feels the impact of the team’s slaps against his back.
--
Alex gets his first win in the much-improved Williams in Canada.
Kimi goes into the wall of champions when the rain picks up, and Mercedes pits Max for slicks while Alex takes the gamble on staying out. The track dries a few laps later, and twenty after that the Williams mechanics are practically launching themselves over the start-line barrier, fists pumping beside the checkered flag.
George rushes through the weigh-in, practically throws his helmet to his own mechanics so he can make it behind the barrier for the podium. Carlos and Lily make a space for him with their team; Carlos’ own eyes wet and shiny. They’re all so sickeningly happy for each other. George tries to push away the wave of nausea at their glow.
Max drenches Alex as soon as the corks are popped, that selfless, good-natured elation one can afford when an absence from the top step is a temporary anomaly. Alex points to the team below, at George, and then tries his best to spray them with what’s left of the bottle. A few stray drops manage to hit him in the eye. He’d almost forgotten the sting.
--
Brought up your Instagram during media today, Alex had warned him, way back, now. George had watched the video over and over again, later, when it had finally been posted, sweaty-palmed, trying to understand. Pretty sure he tried to imply that we’re fucking to the internet, if you’re wondering how having him as a teammate is going for me so far.
Sorry, George had replied, face burning. Alex had just knocked their shoulders together, then settled back against George’s headboard, unwrapping his third Twix with one hand and channel surfing with the other.
Nah, screw him. Says more about him than you, mate. Obsessed, clearly.
--
They pair Mercedes with Red Bull for an event on the fan stage in Monaco. He’s shocked they’d let him get nearly halfway through the season before pulling it, really, considering the engagement metrics. Can almost feel kindness in the restraint.
Can almost feel the kindness right up until he’s standing in front of hundreds of knowing, cheeky fans, hands folded and clenched in front of his slacks, and the moderator starts up a fun game of what career would this driver have if they weren’t driving?
“Streamer,” George says magnanimously, blandly, when it’s his turn to evaluate Max. Truck driver, he’d wanted to go with. Executioner.
Max’s reaction is friendly and blank enough, that nod-laughter. Which is why George is thrown completely off when it’s his turn, and Max answers: “George would do – what is it? Magic Mike.”
Frenzied screeching from the audience. Isack actually drops to one knee and pivots to face away from the crowd with the force of his wheeze. George’s frozen mannequin grin doesn’t falter, alien-wide eyes safely shielded behind his Ray Bans while the moderator sputters to regain her footing, to mine the soundbite gold she’s been handed.
“Magic Mike?” she prompts, playing up the scandal in her tone. Max shrugs, that shit-eating trout smile pulling at his lips.
“Yeah, with the shirts off,” he insists, doing a figure eight hand gesture that’s meant to mimic sexy dancing, George supposes. Personally, he’s doing his best to dissociate, blood boiling. Max won’t rest – isn’t content with just digging the grave. Has to shovel the dirt in, himself, too. George can feel it behind his teeth, the coarse grain.
The moderator pulls him back into his body, reaching her hand through the stage air to puppet him back to life. “George – what do you think? Do you have the moves?”
“Nah, don’t reckon so,” pleasant smile against the microphone, flexing a gangly arm for emphasis. “Very flattering, mate, but I think the girls pay to see blokes a little less skinny.”
The moderator laughs, a compulsory dismissive hand gesture at his self-deprecation. Max frowns, though, brow furrowing with a severity that looks comical in the Heineken Zero Fan Zone.
“You’re perfect,” he objects, motioning up and down, as if to map the expanse of George’s body. The audience roars again at the second-language snafu, and Max spares them a flickering glance of confusion, like he can’t understand the force of the reaction. “I’m not wrong! Clearly he was meant for this.”
George clenches the microphone in his fist tightly enough that he hears a faint crack of something plastic. The volume is off when he lifts it back to his mouth to politely chuckle.
--
Fury powers him into Q2 despite the car’s setup forcing him to desperately oversteer the corners – the missing downforce supplanted by the weight of his anger, he can only assume. And they say outperforming the car is a myth.
That’s P11, mate, GP says into his ear. They’re ringing again, though, a tunnel vision focus on where the Mercedes mechanics are pulling Max’s car back into the garage to prep him for Q3.
“You fuck,” Isack greets him as he pushes himself out of the car, a leg thrown over the side and an awkward, shaky hop onto concrete. He’s grinning when he says it, though, P14 himself. It’s discombobulating, even this many races into the season, the relaxed way Isack reacts to George outperforming him, once he’s finished slamming his steering wheel with frustration on the drive back to the garage. The way it doesn’t gut George when it’s the other way round, like it had with Kimi, to know Toto was gushing over his radio. “I’ll get you in the race, though.”
“Good luck making up four places at the start,” George grouses, and Isack grunts in commiserating agreement. Fucking Monaco.
Isack trails him as he deposits his helmet on the shelf and tugs off his balaclava, cheeks flushed and damp. “You want to join Liam and I for food later?”
George wishes he still had his helmet on to hide the too-obvious wince at his first pity-invite. Isack’s mouth quirks, like he thinks George is being weird. No matter, anyway.
“Can’t,” he rebuffs, affable, apologetic. It really was kind of him, even if there’s a twist in his stomach at being someone who appreciates kindness being extended to him, now. “I’m gassed – early night, for sure, or I’ll have to make up the hours in the car when we’re all stuck in a train tomorrow.”
“Oh, my god,” Isack agrees, rebounding quickly. “I’m already mad.”
--
It will be an early night, once he’s finished with Max.
He’s never been to his apartment, naturally, but they’d split a cab home from the club, once, in 2022. Max had been in such a state – doubtful he would have shared a backseat with George, otherwise - that George had had to ask the driver to wait while he’d shouldered him past the concierge and into the elevator, his weight made lighter by the giddiness George had felt at being the insider, for once. The inner circle. It’s one of those feelings he looks back on during sleepless nights, when he runs through every debasing, try-hard memory since he made it onto the grid, and thrashes his comforter off to expend the energy of humiliation.
He remembers how Max had slammed the door in his face, back then, without even a slurred thank you, as he braves a brisk knock on it, now.
Counts to ten before knocking again, more insistently, less like an insurance salesman. This time he hears activity behind the door: clattering, shuffling, a hissed get back. Unlatching, and then the door thrown open, Max’s angry brow pinching together with bewilderment when he sees George standing there in his Adidas sweater with the hood up, the sponsorship now outdated on him.
“The fuck?” he asks, bluntly. George permits the anger to override the impoliteness in pushing past Max to get inside, and Max allows it, goes pliant at the shove, visibly stunned.
“Close the door, will you?” George hisses. Max obliges in the same state, and George pulls his hood down, hair still oily and mussed from qualifying. Confrontation had felt more pressing than conditioner, at the time. “I’d like to say something, and then I’ll leave.”
Prim, like he’s presenting an issue at a driver’s meeting, like it’s the most routine thing in the world, him standing on Max Verstappen’s beige carpeting that could really use a vacuum, that his cat is sniffing suspiciously at his sambas, that he’s witnessing Max in his loungewear of Red Bull branded basketball shorts and soft white basics. He must pull off the illusion effectively enough, because Max just nods, eyes still pinched with wary confusion.
“Drink?” he asks, though, when George opens his mouth to start. The fury falters, thrown.
“No thank you,” he responds, tightly. “Dying without your hourly Red Bull? You must be in withdrawal. Do they even let you drink it, now?”
“Not in the paddock,” Max grunts, like it’s a genuine bother. “Gotten used to the taste yet?”
“Can you get used to the taste of battery acid?”
Max scoffs. “Can’t all be hand-picked Columbian espresso beans – ”
“Yes, you got me, I like good coffee. I don’t have the culinary palate of a Minecraft streamer.”
“ – ground by French baristas wearing cream sweaters.”
“None of that even means anything,” George snaps, faltering fury rising back, colouring his ears. You’re so easy to work up, his sister had always chided. “I know what you’re doing with the media.”
Max blinks. “What have I ever done with the media?”
George feels himself puff up, overcompensating for the warmth burning at the high of his cheeks, the bridge of his nose. “All the – shirtless comments. Calling me pretty.”
Max colours now, ugly and splotchy. “Jesus, fucking – what’s your fucking problem? That’s what you do, right? Post it online for everyone, every day a photo of your eyes, the wrists. You do it on purpose. I can’t say it, though?”
“You think you’re very clever, like I don’t know what you’re saying. Like the entire grid, your legion of fanboys, doesn’t get a good chortle up about what you’re saying.”
“Seriously, mate, what the fuck am I saying?”
“You’re so full of shit,” George seethes, eyes stinging. He’s moved closer, long legs encroaching on Max’s space even as he’s crossed his arms tightly against his ribs, protectively. Max doesn’t back up, either, even though his expression is a cross between indignance and prey animal nerves. “You thought you could say whatever you wanted about me to Alex, that he wouldn’t tell me? That he’d just laugh and agree with you when you call me a fag?”
Max flinches, and then his expression crumples into a cringe, hand shooting up to rub at the nape of his neck.
“I didn’t – that was, like – years ago,” a defensive grumble, eyes flickering up to George’s flushed face, then to the carpet, then back again. “You’re acting like – ”
He cuts himself off, pained expression flattening into something more evaluating of George’s heaving chest, protective hold on himself, his shiny eyes. The line of his throat when he swallows, thick and dry.
George feels his mistake all at once, the upper hand of surprise and superiority slipping from his grasp like position on a track. The weight of Max’s narrowed gaze like a dive-bomb in a corner, one that George never comes out of ahead.
“You’re acting like…” he repeats, trailing away.
It’s not a humane trap he’s gotten himself into – he’s not going to be released in the alley behind the apartment, unscathed. He rips himself from the glue of Max’s scrutiny and turns, reaching for the handle of the front door. Doesn’t quite get there before there’s heavy palms on his biceps, jerking him back around. Before the back of his head and shoulders hit the drywall, before the air is knocked out of his lungs in one big shock of an exhale, swallowed by the lips pressing painfully and clumsily against his own.
His brain registers the taste of battery acid and spearmint before he’s shoving Max backwards, hard, and swinging his fist. It’s unskilled with errant form, glancing off the bottom right side of Max’s chin, but lands satisfyingly enough to have him drawing a sharp intake from the shock, hissing pain through clenched teeth.
George doesn’t stick around to find out that he can’t take a punch, or to guess the emotion tugging at the corners of Max’s eyes, terrified of how much it looks like panic instead of hatred. This time he reaches the door handle and disappears down the hallway.
--
“Is putting it on the mantle too tacky?” Alex asks, trophy hovering over the fireplace, when George is sitting catatonic on his uncomfortably chic white sofa an hour later.
Lily had been gracious at the surprise of him at the door, even though she’d opened it wearing undereye masks and a hideous oversized Williams shirt from their Miami merch drop. She’d ushered him through without skipping a beat: you’re just in time – he’s having a crisis.
Alex flutters across the room, trophy still in hand. “Yeah, way tacky. Like it’s my kid’s honour roll trophy.”
“I don’t think they give out trophies for honour roll,” George pipes up, weakly.
“How would you know?” Alex retorts, setting the trophy on a shelf already precariously filled with golfing accolades. He picks it up again, immediately unsatisfied. “How would either of us know?”
“Not there,” Lily calls from the adjacent dining room.
“I was already not putting it there,” Alex calls back. He places it back on the mantle, turns it this way, that. “It kinda works, though, right?”
George spreads the fingers on his right hand out, then squeezes them together, the dull ache in his knuckles the only proof he has that he hadn’t dreamed it.
“Not really feeling the support, here, mate.”
George startles, looks up, brain scrambling for the last thread of conversation. “It’s a nice trophy.”
“Jesus,” Alex sighs, dropping onto the couch next to him, the trophy settling on the cushion in the space between them. “What driving a midfield car will do to a man.”
--
Max beats George to the punch and puts as many drivers as he can between them for the anthem, Kimi, Gabi and Lindblad trailing after him in a gaggle to ask about the dark bruise blooming on the underside of his jaw, after. George doesn’t catch the excuse – or maybe there is no excuse. Maybe it’s George stormed into my home in his old Mercedes hoodie and tried to kill me last night, finally cracked, like we all knew he would, and the kids would nod, like, obviously, yeah.
More likely he doesn’t say anything, from the way he ducks his head when he catches George’s deer-in-headlights gaze across parc fermé, even though Max Verstappen doesn’t duck away from anything. Max Verstappen also doesn’t kiss George Russell, though, so what the fuck does he know about what Max Verstappen does.
I could ruin him, George thinks, idly.
He puts his helmet on and lowers himself into his midfield car, instead, to chase P10.
--
Laurent pulls him into one-on-ones with a frequency that has him on edge, at first.
Except - he wants to hear about the car. Could listen for hours about the car, intermittently switching between diligent notetaking of George’s tentative criticisms and deep, unbroken eye contact, brow creased with the force of empathetic listening, or at least the performance of it. It makes George dizzy, after a few sessions, and he finds himself nervously, pre-emptively apologizing for performance issues, guessing at the angle.
“I think,” Laurent frowns, after George’s stammer of the team deserves better than a P10, “that you worked a miracle to get that point, considering the way we had you nursing the brakes.”
“Oh,” George replies, uselessly. Feels like a puppet with the strings cut, now, with the beats of his scripts from when an I’m-not-mad-I’m-disappointed Toto would call him in with a let’s discuss that P4 skipped completely.
“You and Isack are getting everything out of what you’re being given,” Laurent continues, “We acknowledge that. I know the circumstances of your move here are complicated, maybe a bit of making the best out of a bad situation on both of our parts – but if I can be candid, I’m having a fair bit of fun watching you two this year.”
“Fun,” George echoes, eyes wide. Laurent laughs, self-effacing and kind.
“I know, I know, probably not so much fun for you guys, not being on the front row. I look forward to that too, believe me. It’s going to happen soon – you two will drag the car there, kicking and screaming, before it’s even ready. And it will be ready.”
George leaves these meetings feeling like he’s left a hypno-therapy session, like someone’s new-age tricked him into loosening the tension in his shoulders, and he’s still suspicious of the success of it, a skeptic through and through. If meetings with Toto had felt like a meeting with a guillotine, anticipating the chopping off of his Mercedes-branded baseball cap at every one, then meetings with Laurent feel like he’s waiting for the blade to come down on the extension of a kind hand. One more race out of the points to sever the reach.
He keeps waiting, keeps racing, and the hand is still there, open and patient for George to return the hold. It can’t really be that easy, though, when nothing is.
“George,” his front-left tyre gunner calls from across the garage, once he’s pulling his gloves off after FP2. “Isack says he doesn’t name the car. It’s bullshit, right? You have to refer to it as something in your head.”
“He’s crazy,” Isack informs, pulling off his own gloves, as an explanation for why George is being drawn into this bizarre conversation. It takes him a second before he realizes the tyre gunner is asking him to join in.
“Uh,” he starts, mind searching. “I guess I always just call it car. Like, whoa there, car.”
“Like a horse,” the back-right gunner adds, helpfully, turning to the other mechanic with the posture of someone winning an argument.
“Yeah, but you’d say whoa there, girl, with a horse,” front-left argues. “You wouldn’t say whoa there, horse. You’d still give it something.”
“You would if the horse’s name was Horse,” Isack raises.
“Good point. George – is your car’s name Car?”
George opens his mouth, falters. Then, with genuine mirth warming his chest, unfamiliar and terrifying: “I’m bad enough at remembering the names that actually matter, first off. Can I make a complete ass of myself and ask for yours, again?”
“Oh my god,” Isack interjects, eyes wide, and George’s heart plummets to the bottom of his stomach, that he’s proven them all right again, the pompous tool. Except: “imagine if it was Horse and Car.”
--
George is cumulatively jet-lagged and supine on his hotel bed in Austria when Isack texts him a video at the end of media day.
what four months without a red bull does to a mfer he follows it up with. He pushes himself up onto his elbows, scrolling back up.
It’s a video of the press conference from earlier in the day, from the thumbnail, the one pairing Max, Gasly, and Charles. George feels a spike of nervous adrenaline when he presses play, eyes drawn to the bottom of Max’s jaw, where the evidence of George’s punch has faded back to the pale uniformity of the surrounding skin. It’s strange – he’s done his best to not look too closely at Max’s face, the past month.
“It must be validating,” a reporter is starting, Max staring disinterested and unfocused, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle. The Mercedes kit still looks like a Halloween costume, on him. “To see how badly the Red Bull team is struggling this year. You must feel like you made the right choice, in the move to Mercedes.”
Max blinks, microphone still resting limply on his lap. George can feel the atmosphere-suck as his silence drags on through the screen, before Max feels he’s meted out sufficient punishment and raises it to his mouth. “I’m waiting for the question, still.”
Gasly smirking down at his shoes, Charles wincing, slightly.
“The question is if you are happy being at Mercedes, with Red Bull failing.”
“Obviously the car is not there,” Max replies, clipped, eyes haughty like his real answer is: are you stupid? “But you’re saying failing, which I don’t get. You’re just trying to get a reaction, with that, right? They’ve been in the points nearly every race with a car that probably shouldn’t be there. George is doing a really good job, they picked the right guy to help them. That’s just obvious.”
“Right, but, obviously, Mercedes is leagues above – ”
“Yeah, we’ve been pretty good this season so far, but I wouldn’t say leagues above anything. Red Bull is learning a lot, compared to other teams struggling with the new regs. They listen to their drivers, and George is a good guy to have for feedback, really technical with the car. You know, Mercedes could maybe be a little better about this, even. There were some troubles when I got here with the brakes, maybe they could have listened to George a little more on that. Still some troubles now. I wouldn’t say leagues anything, no. George can catch us before the season is out, I think.”
“Right,” the moderator steps in. “That answers that.”
The clip ends, and George’s shaking fingers hover above the replay button that replaces the thumbnail, face burning, eardrums throbbing with the force of his heartbeat. A follow-up message from Isack, underneath: im in the points too smh. when he says red bull and george could he include me in that too pls? red bull, george, and isack thanks.
You ruined his push lap last weekend, George reminds him, to reassure. Isack’s typing bubble disappears and reappears twice before his reply pops up.
BLATANT FAVOURTISM!!!
George huffs a laugh, cheeks hot. He collapses back into the comforter, head sinking into the down pillow, phone angled above him as he presses play again. Drifts off to the repetition of George is doing a really good job, George will catch us.
--
Thing is – and he only dares to let himself think of this now, going over every past interaction with the fine-tooth comb of the kiss - there had been one moment, maybe.
George in the throwback white racing suit, in Qatar. Max thinking he can explain away a dirty move because some form of presidential rule applies to him only: if Max Verstappen is doing it, it isn’t dirty. He’s seen the pictures, since, of course, hair disarrayed and brow knit, skin paler with fury, Max gesticulating intensely, posture jutting out with the force of his righteousness. He’s right back there whenever he sees them, a fresh wave of pissed off hitting him despite any buried hatchets.
But – while he’s right back there, he can remember, maybe, in a split-second break from Max’s fury, his eyes focused less on the fucking correct, thank you, words coming out of George’s mouth and more on the shape of the lips forming them. Literally zoning out from how little he respects me, he’d thought at the time, and since. Except.
And then, alright, perhaps – early last year, before George’s drop-off. Mercedes and Red Bull’s garages sharing a wall, George overhearing the shouting coming from Max’s side, the distinct sound of a tool thumping against plaster and then clattering to concrete. A wrench, George had guessed idly, at the time, lingering at the data screens to better overhear. Or, no, breaker bar.
Hadn’t had to make excuses to his mechanics as he’d gravitated without thinking to the shared alley behind their garages – nobody on his team had been much bothered by George’s absence from their workspace, then. Had been surprised to find Max slumped against the back wall, there, head bowed, hands rubbing harshly through his sweat-flattened hair. Except that had been a lie, hadn’t it?
“Sounds like you found the culprit for the suspension failure,” George had said, trying for casual, maybe a touch over-familiar. “I hope the wrench learned its lesson.”
“Can you fuck off, please?” Max had rasped out, tone falsely polite, hands dragging down his cheeks, stretching them, to better level George with a glare. George had walked over to lean against the wall beside him, instead, legs stretching out in a long, arrogant line. It’d come naturally, that year, before Kimi had shot up the rankings. “No, seriously.”
“You don’t own this wall,” George had snipped back. Not sure what had compelled him to be so stubborn, really, just that the urge to be present had bubbled under his skin. “Not this year, anyway.”
“Oh, so it’s your wall?” Max had drawled, hand half-folded over his mouth, elbow resting on his knee. “Win a few races and what’s mine is yours.”
“You know how it is around here. What have you done for me lately,” George had scuffed a racing boot along the pavement, crossed his legs casually at the ankle. “I know how it feels. If you want to talk about anything.”
“How it feels,” Max had scoffed, like the very idea was absurd.
“Yeah, you know. To have what would have been a perfect race sabotaged by bad wrenches.”
A snicker, at that. George had felt a bit giddy, like a kid, to have elicited the sound. “All bad wrenches, your last four races of last year, then?”
“Oh, yeah,” George had agreed, emphatically. “And the years before that. Wrenches, all of them. The bastards.”
“How about Qatar?”
“Watch yourself.”
He’d snickered, again. Then, heart-stoppingly, he’d reached a hand over and wrapped his fingers around George’s left ankle, squeezing, once, before letting go. George can still remember perfectly, now, how his breath had caught in his throat. Could swear Max had rubbed his thumb in a small circle at the bony knob of the joint, could swear he hadn’t made that up.
“So annoying. Go celebrate,” he’d dismissed. “Like I’m upset to miss the extra media.”
“Please,” George had scoffed back, pushing off the wall, ankle tingling like it’d fallen asleep as he’d walked away with inexplicable hesitation, like he’d gladly miss a party to sit against the wall with Max Verstappen all night. Wrap your hand around my ankle again and keep it there, what is wrong with him. “Like it’s not killing you to not have my car.”
--
Zandvoort is a miracle.
It’s not even crazy luck, or at least not fully. Stroll does lose grip and spins the car one-eighty on the track, and it’s at just the right angle to force Charles into a sudden braking move, allowing George to pull around and take off as they right themselves. He keeps it in P3, though, because they’ve unlocked some kind of magic from the car on this track, a back-to-back P6 and P7 for himself and Isack in qualifying and a broken record for fastest pit stop of the year so far during the race.
He's pummelling his hands on the steering wheel – lightly, of course – when he sweeps past the checkered flag, GP’s voice in his ear going: unbelievable drive, mate, that’s podium. It doesn’t even sound sarcastic, considering the real unbelievable drives he’d been used to, before George.
“You’d think they were top of the podium,” Joylon Palmer commentates, wryly, when Goerge is lifted off his feet by Horse and Car at the barrier, the rest of the team jumping up and down, reaching around to slap him on the back. Isack rushes across parc fermé and slams their helmets together, incroyable, Georgie, and, Jesus, is this what being on Williams feels like?
Max is hovering near his first-place marker, weighed-in and helmet off, the nervous restraint as he eyes George’s approach a visible buzz. George practically throws himself on him, though, Max staggering to catch his weight, a one-armed hug that’s returned enthusiastically. The least amount of simple polite acknowledgement they’ve ever shown each other, post-race, sweat-wet hair rubbing against each other’s cheeks.
“Look at you,” Max murmurs into his ear, smile wide, and George is swept into a hand-clasp by a second-place Ollie in Ferrari red before he can think too hard about what that means.
The interview is a blur. He tries to pivot back to the team as much as possible, a lesson learnt from his mistakes at Mercedes, making sure to highlight the pit stop and Isack’s defensive drive once Charles had fallen behind him over his own performance. He could cry laughing, when he gets to the cool-down room, at how much he’d missed the absurdity of the sudden quiet, the polite small-talk, the weird seats. Max grins over at him whenever they play a particularly shocking clip from the race, and George sinks down into his chair, his own smile hidden behind the ludicrously expensive glass water bottle.
It's almost nice, too, the crowd’s reaction to hearing the Dutch national anthem at their home race for the first time since 2023. If it had to be an anthem that wasn’t British, he supposes this passes for alright. Max beams when they chant his own personal anthem, and when the corks pop, he and Ollie immediately turn the champagne spray on George, who spares his initial blast for the Mercedes financial director they’ve put up on the constructor’s podium, remembering that he was always a good sport around the garage, last year.
After, champagne dripping off his lashes, posing for the photo: his palm on the high of Max’s back, fingertips grazing at the nape of his neck, the exposed skin just above the collar of his racing suit. Max’s fingers stretching wide around his waist, squeezing, once.
--
He tells himself he’s slipping away through the back door of the garage for fresh air and a moment of privacy to double over, exhausted and overwhelmed. But when Max is there, leaning against the back wall, worrying at the Velcro clasp on the neck of his suit – well. He can admit the ghost of Max’s fingers around his ankle had been haunting, a bit, lately.
Max starts at the bang of the door closing, at George’s wild scan of the parked track vehicles for lingering employees. He drops his hands to his waist, trying all the world to look like this is a normal place for him to be right now.
“You know, I think I own the wall again, so,” he tries, that monotonous Dutch rasp. George’s chest heaves, heart rate punishing, and he’s striding over to wrap his own fingers around Max’s forearm, to drag him into a tiny alcove covering the door to parts storage. Max goes willingly, so willingly, so that by the time they get there he’s leading the way, crowding George up against the locked door, shielding him with the side wall. George runs his hand up Max’s forearm to clutch at his bicep, the other winding itself into the back of his hair, tilting his neck up so that he only needs to crane down just a little to gasp into Max’s mouth, swallowed down happily.
“You gonna hit me again if I do this?” Max asks, one hand fisting the racing suit fabric at George’s waist, the other gripping his jaw, angling George’s chin so he can take his bottom lip between his teeth on the next kiss, dragging light and then letting go with a pop. George murmurs his maybe, yeah, against half-parted lips that stretch into a grin, leaving George kissing teeth. “Good, I liked it. I pressed my fingers into the bruise you left while I jerked off, until it hurt again.”
George makes a choked noise of shock, a jesus christ that’s lost against another bruising kiss, his fingers ripping the velcro of Max’s race suit open to the waist, rucking up the hem of the nomex and scraping his nails against his abdomen, which tenses and then untenses, gloriously, at the contact. Max groans, the sound a vibration in George’s throat, and breaks away to nip at George’s earlobe, to mouth at the underside of his jaw, lick a fat stripe along his neck, from the collar back up to the underside of his ear.
“So good,” he murmurs, there, and then moves a little lower to suck, tongue laving champagne and salt until he releases him, and licks again at the mark left behind. The back of George’s head hits the door, hard, neck craning to the touch, eyelashes fluttering, mouth parted and panting. “No idea how good you look, all the time. Like you’re wearing my clothes.”
“I’m a mess,” George protests, voice hoarse, fingers splaying out across Max’s stomach. He’s burning all over, body heat relitigating the dried sweat and sticky, sour champagne, twice as disgusting. Max shakes his head, though, nose dragging against the underside of George’s jaw as the hand on George’s waist makes a lateral move for the bulge tenting the front of his race suit. He presses, a teasing circle, and George drops his forehead onto Max’s shoulder, keening at the pressure, the hand on Max’s stomach pulling out of his undershirt to clutch onto the other.
“It’s how you should always be,” Max disagrees, slotting his leg between George’s, which fall open for him, easy, and grinding up. “In my clothes, soaking wet.”
“Oh, my god,” George moans, shoving Max backwards. He nearly loses his balance on the step of the doorway, suit hanging half open and shamelessly, visibly hard. His expression is cheeky and lewd, though. None of the terror of a grave overstep from last time. He’s got him, he knows it, and damn it – “get me the hell out of here.”
--
He makes Max wait fifteen minutes in his car after dropping George off before he’s allowed to enter the hotel, which Max deigns to allow only after pulling him over the centre console to stick his tongue down his throat and an extracted, breathless promise not to shower. He does, anyway, rinsing as quickly as he can before impatient knocking lights up his door.
Max gets his arms around his waist the moment he’s kicked it closed behind him, nose buried in the crook of his neck, a deep inhale that has George squirming in his grasp. The frown he’s levelled with, after, is ridiculous, frankly.
“Okay,” George chides, with handfuls of Max’s grey hoodie. “Get these off, now.”
And –
It’s weirdly sweet.
In the alley, Max tells him he wants George’s fist to his jaw, but once he’s got George laid out on high-count cotton, his lips are gentle on the sharp bones of his ankle, the inside of his knee, his thighs. George gasps and writhes at the stimulation, unfamiliar enough at this point to feel like tickling, or torture. Max’s hand splays over his stomach and presses to keep him still, the other hand coming up to cup underneath his mouth.
“Spit,” Max orders, and then changes his mind, two of the fingers crooking into the corner of George’s mouth, pulling it open and keeping it there. “Drool.”
George’s body agrees on its own, saliva pooling behind his teeth, underneath his tongue.
Those fingers, after, against the cleft of his ass, the coating of drool dripping excess onto the sheets underneath his hips. Max, lips wrapped around the head of George’s cock, a quick detour, pulls off just long enough to issue demands: arch up for me, baby.
George feels wild when they slip inside, up to the knuckle immediately. A shock of emotion catching in his throat, his brow pinching together, rasping, slack-mouth exhales. Tears leaking out the corners of his eyes when Max scissors his fingers, then curls, George’s thighs trembling on either side of his knees.
“Pretty,” Max tells him, his own voice wrecked, even though George hasn’t touched him at all, not yet, not really. George turns his face into the sheets at the praise, the bridge of his nose, the skin underneath his eyes burning, open mouth dragging at cotton, gasping and closing, his teeth catching on fabric.
Max leans over him, hand cupping the cheek pressed against the mattress, thumbing underneath his bottom lip to turn his head back up, to face him.
“Hiding, like you hide all year. Why don’t you pout for the cameras anymore, baby, when you’re even more gorgeous in my suit?”
“Didn’t – ah,” George gasps at the sudden feeling of emptiness as Max slides his fingers out, hears the click of a plastic cap. “Didn’t think you were watching me.”
Max nudges his thighs further apart with his knees, then palms the underside of his hips, dragging them up. “Stupid.”
“Very sexy,” George drawls, mustering annoyance, somehow, as he lowers his chin to watch Max take himself in hand, the other still gripping hard enough to bruise at George’s hip, lining himself up. “Calling me stupid, considering.”
“Especially considering,” Max drawls back, amusement lilting the vowels of his accent, heavier now, here. George can feel him, now, pushing. “Stupidest thing you’ve done yet, if you wanted to be anyone else’s, ever again.”
Entering him slowly, the slide teasing, agonizing, and then all at once, bottoming out. Max’s fingers bite into the muscle of his thighs as he groans, and then he’s falling over George, hands propping himself up on either side of his shoulders, caging him in as he rocks his hips, small movements to start. George, whose bitten his lip hard enough to taste copper, whose breathing is coming out in sharp little pants, turns his head into Max’s wrist, mouthing at the skin, the strained veins, nipping when Max starts really moving into him.
“Pretty in my car, teasing me all year,” Max is blathering, hips jerking, George’s own cock painful and slick between them, precum streaking the planes of his stomach. “Pretty on my dick. You wanna sit on that, too, baby? They’re both yours.”
“Vulgar,” George pants, face red. There’s spit dangling from Max’s bottom lip where it hangs open in concentration, and George wants to lick at it before it drops. “Stop talking. Come here.”
Max licks a stripe up his palm and wraps it around George’s cock on his way to his mouth, talking again anyway to warn George not gonna last, you’re too tight, too good, and George, too, is coming undone after a few wet strokes, crying out against Max’s mouth. He kisses the sound away, until he’s reduced to pathetic mewls and wet cheeks, and Max is coming, hips stuttering until George is full, filled.
--
“It wasn’t about hurting you,” Max murmurs, elbow propped on the pillow beside George’s head, still-flushed cheek resting in his palm as he stares down at him. He’s splotchy all over, and George would like to kiss his nose, except for that he can’t find the energy to lift his head. “I know you probably thought that, right? You love to punish yourself, I think. It’s fun for you.”
George feels empty and uncomfortably slick, with Max pulled out. He wishes, faintly, that Max would stop rambling and gazing down at him and just fuck back into him, soft as he is.
“I hate it break it to you,” George musters a reply, instead, “but you hardly hurt me. I think you used half the bottle.”
Max huffs with laughter, head jerking up to the ceiling, before dropping his gaze back, eyes crinkling and fond. “Stupid – me going to Mercedes.”
George’s chest stills. “Oh.”
“It wasn’t about you at all.”
“That’s nice,” George accepts, airy, weak. “Can we stop, please?”
“Let me tell you, please, because all season you’re miserable and mad at me, and not in the fun way you used to be. You know how last year was for the team, for me. Every race I could see it: I’m just like Alonso, chasing P3 in a car that won’t ever get me there, still driving at fourty-five, because I can’t accept that I let it slip away.”
“Stop,” George rasps, teary, pushing himself up to a sit, heart hammering. Visions of his Google search history, percentage of drivers who never get the title. Max places a hand on his collarbone, holding him still. “Please.”
“I couldn’t let it end like that. Toto’s a bastard, but he has the car. That was it. I couldn’t wait it out with Laurent, not at thirty. Just,” Max rolls his words around in his mouth, brow knit with frustration. “Understand.”
“What about me?” George asks, and, Christ, does it sound pleading. “I’m banished to that? Aging out, celebrating P3’s like a miracle? I understand, believe me.”
Confusion, now. “It’s not the same.”
George barks a laugh, bitter and short, dying in his throat. “Nobody can be the same, can they? It’s like you can’t even recognize us as real drivers. We’re all just NPC’s in a sim. NPC’s who can’t possibly want it as badly.”
“You’re not an – ” Max starts, a flare of indignation that goes out just as fast, tensed shoulders slumping. He rubs the hand at George’s sternum, light circles. “I know you want it. You drive like you want it.”
“Gee, thanks,” George rejoins, dry. His hand covers Max’s with the intent to rip it off, but he betrays himself, merely holding it in place, stilling it. “What are the rest of us supposed to do then, while you collect your next four titles?”
“Red Bull suits you,” Max insists, instead. “Toto made you too desperate – you drove desperate.”
“You made me desperate,” George retorts, even as his heart beats a traitorous yes, yes, he did, he did, you saw that. Tears springing to the corners of his eyes, traitorous yet. His free hand comes up to swipe at them as they spill. “Damn it.”
Max knocks it away, his own thumbs swiping at the streaks down the side of his nose. He kisses the corner of his mouth with urgency, and then just underneath his right eye. “Make me work for it.”
“I already gave it away for free.”
“Not that,” Max tsks, a flick of tongue at a tear that’s made its way down to his top lip, at the reminder. George’s fingers wrap feebly around the wrist of the hand that’s holding his jaw, theoretically to push it away, again, but just to hold, in practice. “Take the title from me next year. The year after. The year after that.”
A snort, like he couldn’t get any more humiliating, right now. “In what car?”
“In the one you drove to the podium today,” Max insists. “The one they’re building around you, that’s getting better because you’re better, with them.”
“You’re patronizing me.”
“You’re being difficult,” he rebuts, pushing George back against the sheets, following him down, one hand drifting back to his bare stomach, splaying his fingers wide. “Playing hard to get, to make me want you. Pathetic, but working.”
“Now you’re distracting me,” George huffs, throat thick. Max’s hand is rubbing soothing circles on his abdomen, inching coyly lower, making his dick twitch with interest. Is there any part of his body that won’t betray him? “You aren’t cute.”
“Distracting? Who’s distracting? You’re the minx,” Max insists, then dips to capture his mouth, a thorough, searing kiss that warms him from the chest-up, has his toes flexing into the top sheet, lower back arching. Pulling away, a murmur, eyes half-lidded: “maybe I was an ass, and I just want to make you feel better. Does it have to be nefarious?”
“Yes,” George insists, but he’s reaching down to wrap a hand around Max, already hard again, and directing him, insistently, back to where he’s stretched out and still dripping with him.
Max sinks in easily, an obscene, wet sound that has him hissing satisfaction through his teeth.
“See?” Max pants, stilled, catching his breath before he starts moving, hands coming up to frame George’s face, like a precious thing. “You’re dangerous already.”
George hikes a leg behind Max’s back, a sodden laugh choked out of him, chest blooming, another on the list of betrayals. “Stop talking.”
--
“Very Mercedes-cool, to not show up at your own party,” Isack informs him, crisply, on the plane the next afternoon. George winces behind his sunglasses.
“Actually, it was Red Bull lame of me.”
“That’s the spirit,” Isack grins, all forgiven, just that easy.
--
The car gets better.
It’s not 2023 better, probably won’t ever be again. They get it to fighting shape by Austin, though, and Isack cinches a P3 of his own, much easier than George’s had been in Zandvoort. Then, a P2 for George in Brazil, and another P3 in Vegas.
“Think you’re hot shit again, pushing me off track,” Max growls, shoving him flat on his stomach on the king-size back at the hotel, the Sphere’s cycle of LED advertisements near-blinding through the window, even from the penthouse.
“Doesn’t feel nice, does it,” George snipes back, cut off when all the air in his lungs rushes out at Max draping his body along his own, bearing down on him with his full weight, a sloppy kiss pressed to the crook of his neck. Struggles to wheeze out: “getting pushed around by a Red Bull.”
Someone writes an article online that cites Red Bull – and George, specifically – as the ones to watch, next year. It’s a bit of engagement clickbait, he has to concede, but he’s still warmed by the bulk of the comments attached to the Reddit re-post: does nothing, wins 2028 WDC. He can tell it’s fond, though, from the user flair Princess George.
He plays padel with Isack and Liam back in Monaco between race weekends, and it isn’t even for team content. Most times, they don’t even post a photo of it to Instagram. Alex is his faithful partner, but he ropes Max in, once, when he knows he’s locked himself away for a full three days on iRacing.
“Dude, how did you get him to show up?” Liam asks, in awe. George just shrugs, doesn’t look up from lacing his runners. Liam doesn’t ask him again, however, after Max essentially tanks their hour with how bad he is.
The title becomes a sure-thing for Max at Qatar, where a P2 puts him at an insurmountable lead. It’s also Red Bull Racing’s first win of the season, Isack in near-tears as he hoists the trophy over his head, George and the team underneath the podium nearly drowning out the crowd’s tu-du-du-du with the fervour of their own joy. Max’s only celebration in parc fermé is the five fingered salute he flashes the cameras and the can of Red Bull that George passes surreptitiously to Kimi for him to drink, publicly, gratefully, with minimal fear of upbraiding from Toto.
They wait until they’re back in Monaco with it’s more lenient attitude toward an open bar to properly celebrate. It’s one of the rare times the entire grid parties together, the irresistible siren song of free-flowing booze for men of which top-shelf liquor on demand is no financial hardship. George and Max are discrete. Nobody knows, of course – aside from Alex, who, despite frequent apologies from George, would desperately like to never discuss why he knows, and has also returned his key to George’s apartment – and it’s a relief, to be on the same page about the discretion. It’s inviolable, the secrecy, a necessity to be able to keep doing things such as winning a world championship in Qatar. Adds a dimension of the sacred to what they’re doing, as well, a secret communion reserved for dim bedroom lighting and special request Michelin-star takeaway on hotel room floors, cross-legged, just the two of them –
“Are you and Max fighting again?” Carlos asks when he sidles up to where George is leaning across the bar, shouting drink orders, white dress shirt near see-through with dancing sweat. “Why is he sabotaging your game tonight? He is scaring away the beautiful women trying to dance with you.”
“Yep,” George shouts, quickly, irritation spiking an eyebrow in Max’s direction, where he’s now slumped in an Italian-leather booth, looking overly pleased with himself when he catches the expression. “Fighting again. You know how he is.”
“I would understand if he was stealing them from you,” Carlos continues, a touching display of camaraderie, “but he doesn’t seem interested in even this. Just cruel for the sake of it.”
George purses his lips and shakes his head with commiseration. Max grins, wide-mouthed and eye-crinkling, as if he can guess. “I’ve said this for years.”
He heads over to the table, a negroni in one hand and a G&T in the other, sliding precariously through twisting bodies before settling down beside Max, leaving enough room for plausible deniability between them. Max spreads out until his thigh is a long, warm line along George’s, anyway. Could be an intimidating alpha move, George reasons, if it weren’t for the blatant bedroom eyes raking up his torso.
“I didn’t know what to get you,” he says, nudging the G&T toward him.
“What do you get for the man who has everything,” Max slurs, an attempt at suggestive foiled by the way he slips down the booth seat when he tries to turn into George’s side. George drags the G&T back towards himself.
“Alright, never mind. You’re cut off.”
“Dance with me.”
“No,” George tells him, firm, pushing him back upright in his seat. A sleepy wink that’s mostly a blink, at George’s hand on him. George’s own eyes roll, but he tamps down on the fond quirk of his lips when Ollie slips into the booth on the other side of Max, sliding a fresh G&T in front of him, which Max accepts gratefully. George’s shoulders drop, resigned.
“Hey, congrats, George,” Ollie says, leaning around, a brightness that hasn’t been stamped out by Ferrari, yet. Max’s brow wrinkles, confused.
“Congrats George what?” he asks, an annoyed out-of-the-loop curl of his mouth. “I’m the one who won.”
Another roll of George’s eyes. Honestly. “Thank you, Ollie. Did they release it?”
“Yeah, like an hour ago.”
“Release what?” Max butts in again.
“George at Red Bull for four more years!” Ollie tells him, a toothy grin. “We’re all gonna grow old together.”
“Watch yourself,” George chides, but tips his drink in Ollie’s direction, anyway.
“Well, congrats to you too, Max. I’ll see you on the dance floor,” Ollie slaps him on the shoulder, sloshing his drink.
“Yeah, whatever,” Max replies absently, eyes glued to George as Ollie slides from the booth and disappears into the crowd. “Performance clause?”
“I’m shocked you can say performance clause right now,” he drawls, eyes downcast into maroon liquor, a faint blush at the high of his cheekbones. “No clause. Just plain old we want you.”
He musters a look up when moments pass without Max saying anything. He’s smiling, that grin George likes where most of his top lip vanishes, somehow, eyes nearly shut, made even more drowsy and besotted by the booze.
“Smart guy, Laurent,” Max says, gesturing to the party. “He thinks this could be for you next year.”
“Don’t condescend,” George frowns. Besotted, pah. He’s had enough of his own to drink.
“They’ll name the top two steps of the podium after us, like the chicanes.”
“They’ve already named a chicane after you. It’s at Silverstone; Maggots.”
“You’ll get so prissy again. We’ll fight so much on the track that you won’t want to fuck anymore.”
“Jesus,” George hisses, ducking his head. “Will you shut up?”
“Just kidding,” Max corrects, flatly. “I will make sure that doesn’t happen. Starting now.”
He shuffles over into George, nearly pushing him flat on his ass onto the floor. “Oh, my god.”
“Cab,” he orders, like George is an app, once he’s manoeuvred out of his seat so Max can get to his feet, a sweaty palm wrapped around George’s elbow right away. For balance, if anyone asks. “Bed.”
“You want to leave your championship party early?” George clarifies, disbelieving, as Max tugs him toward the exit.
“Eh,” he shrugs, a squeeze at George’s elbow. “Next year’s will be funner.”
Whatever that means, George thinks, following, helplessly, and then pulling ahead, leading. Max huffs, trips him up at the ankles, hand slipping down to his forearm to tug him backward so that he’s in front again. George, breathless laughter, shoving him off to the side until he’s stumbling to regain his footing, George already few steps ahead by the time he’s being grabbed by the waist, a dirty move. Whatever that means.